


LIGHT BEAMS (John's Interlude)

by LightningInABottle



Series: BLUE LIPS [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Journalism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bisexual Alexander Hamilton, Blink And You Miss It Slash, Cheating, Clubbing, Disco, Drug Abuse, Emotional pain, Explicit Language, Grief/Mourning, Human Disaster Alexander Hamilton, Jamilton Shows Up Later I Swear, John Laurens Is Gone, M/M, Minor Alexander Hamilton/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler, Non-Explicit Sex, Numbing The Pain, Partying, Past Relationship(s), Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Songfic, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, clubs, heed the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 02:32:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightningInABottle/pseuds/LightningInABottle
Summary: John Laurens was the light of his life. But with him gone, Alexander Hamilton has to find other ways to cope.He doesn’t need to remember John. The memories can’t catch up to him as long as he keeps on drinking, keeps on dancing, keeps on being the queen of the discotheque.But encountering Thomas Jefferson in a seedy club makes things complicated, and maybe complicated is what Alexander needs.





	LIGHT BEAMS (John's Interlude)

**Author's Note:**

> For enhanced reading experience: listen to LIGHT BEAMS by Tove Lo!

John Laurens was like the first beam of morning light—whether it filtered down through lowered blinds onto a bed with sheets so rumpled it looked like a worn piece of paper, or was cast from the sky when they were only just stumbling home from a night of intoxicating kisses and dancing. He was brilliant, but not in the same way as Alexander Hamilton. Where Alex’s mind shone like a polished, multifaceted diamond, it was John’s heart that glowed, casting beams of light everywhere.

Memories of their nights together were hazy but bright. Always fragmented, as if Alex couldn’t process their entire relationship at once without completely losing it. Which might have actually been accurate, considering he broke down in a fit of hysteria when he saw a framed picture of them in his cramped intern’s quarters at the journalism office where he worked. But he never thought about the bad things too much, instead preferring to drown his worries with alcohol and drugs. The high was great, perfect even. Because for a few moments, he could forget about the grittiness of his life and escape to his apartment with John. 

_ “Yeah,” John panted into his shoulder, the smell of sex and sweat and weed almost overwhelming. Alex drank it up, let himself revel in this moment of peace in the late morning. If the desperate sounds they were both making could be taken for peace. Alex’s breaths got heavier, high pitched whines spilling from his lips every time John thrust into him.  _

The many drinks Alex had during the night were getting to him, making a pleasant, numbing thrum spread through his bloodstream. He tapped his foot and hummed along a tune as he took another long drag from the joint in his hand. Normally he just opted for a vape pen, but he knew tonight’s high needed to be stronger. Strong enough to make him forget, to make his mind drift  _ up up up  _ and float away. Float back to lazy Sunday afternoons spent underneath John. 

Through the haze of smoke and his rapidly-approaching high, Alex studied the people walking through the club, watching as their bodies changed color under the flashing strobe lights. Alex was perfectly aware he didn’t look so bad himself, with leather pants John had laughed at him for buying and a sequined top that cast patterns of brightness at his feet like a disco ball. Although he was aware he looked like a two-cent stripper going out to get fucked, he really couldn’t force himself to care. 

_ “Yo, Disco Tits! You coming or what?”  _

The memory struck Alex with such force that he was surprised he didn’t fall over with the intensity of it. John had called him that, about a year ago, when nothing ever mattered. Well, nothing mattered  _ now  _ either, but Alex had to put effort into making it that way. Back then, everything came as easy as breathing. 

_ No no no. Stop it. Stop thinking.  _ Alexander was the motherfucking queen of the discotheque and he wanted everyone to know it. Alex took another deep inhale of his joint before discarding it into a nearby bin, murmuring to himself as he walked to the dance floor. He didn’t need ghosts of a past long gone in order to make himself feel better. Not when he had the thrumming bass of music and the dancefloor and the eyes of multiple people looking at him. 

People wanted to know how he moved so slick, slinking through the crowds in order to take center stage. Alex viciously threw all thoughts of John away, instead letting the high course through his veins. Everything was a bit too buzzy, blurring his senses in a way that was somehow nice and unpleasant at the same time. Whatever. As long as it helped him turn his mind off, helped his body break down his restraint. After all, he was the motherfucking queen of the disco tits. Not because  _ someone  _ had jokingly called him that a long time ago but because he  _ chose  _ to be. 

“ _ Uh, uh,” John grunted out, his breath hot on Alexander’s face and neck. It should have been gross, how their sticky bodies pressed together under the sweltering sheets, but there was no place Alex would rather be.  _

As he began to move to the rhythm of whatever trashy song was blasting on the speakers, Alex repeated it like a mantra in his mind.  _ Disco Tits—motherfucking queen of the discotheque—people wanna know how I move so slick—motherfucking queen of the disco tits.  _ Everything was still a bit too muffled, something ringing in his ears like a reminder trying to dislodge itself. Why did everything have to  _ hurt  _ so damn much? Alex needed more than just some beer and weed, he needed the high that came from hooking up with a stranger. 

“ _ Uh, uh.” This time, it was Alex who made the little punched-out moans, throwing his arms around John’s neck and pulling him even closer.  _

No. There were too many memories, too much pain. As Alex swung his hips around lavisciously, his eyes scanned the people around him keenly, trying to figure out which one would be the best fuck. The skinny hipster dude who had been dancing steadily closer to Alex looked too weak to help him forget, and the girl whose eyes had been trained on him the entire time he had been in the club was definitely a no-go. Girls almost always wanted to be on the bottom, and Alex wasn’t exactly sure his buzzed-out brain could handle that level of coordination. 

_ “Yeah,” John groaned into Alex’s ear, movements growing shallower with exertion. This was the best part, the climax, the high.  _

The thing Alex wouldn’t let himself experience, because with every moment that he spent with John in his imagination would only cause the comedown to be more painful. Suddenly wrenching himself from the recollection, he threw his all into dancing on the floor, occasionally getting handsy with a stranger who had wandered too close to his self-destructive aura. Just then, the beat of whatever song was playing picked up, and Alex’s faded-out state vanished, bursting into bright, sharp color. He began to pick up the pace, feeling fiery and free and alive. 

_ Disco Tits—motherfucking queen of the discotheque—people wanna know how I move so slick—motherfucking queen of the disco tits. _

“Uh, uh.” Alex had latched onto a pretty enough looking girl, one that reminded him of Eliza, waiting back home in their apartment. But he didn’t want to think of that, not when he had banished John so easily. So he didn’t instead focusing on the pretty sounds this girl made when his hands roamed over her body, rocking up against her in time to the music. The club lights made both of their faces blurry, so it was impossible to truly tell what she looked like. But Alex didn’t mind that, not when his blood was singing and everything felt so undeniably right. This was the high he had been chasing all evening, although there was still something missing. 

It was then, looking over the girl’s shoulder as she drew herself closer, that Alexander noticed it. Or, more accurately,  _ him.  _ Thomas Jefferson—accompanied by none other than his constantly-sick, stick in the mud friend, James Madison—had drifted into a dirty club on the wrong side of New York. Imagine that. Jefferson, pulling on Madison by the arm, tugged them over to the wall right in Alex’s line of sight. Now that he could get a good look at him, Jefferson didn’t actually look that bad. His jeans were tight, sculpting over his long legs nicely, and his shirt collar had a few buttons popped, revealing the shape of his collarbone and the skin of his throat. 

All in all, it was a much better look on him that the ‘ _ Annoying Southern Condescending Rich Fuck’  _ demeanor he so often wore at work. Not that Alex would know. His presence at work had become rather lacking in the past few months. Sure, his work got completed weeks ahead of official deadlines, but he almost never left his cramped desk, not even to debate Jefferson. Alex would say he missed the arguments, but he kept himself high enough as much as possible that he didn’t miss anything.  _ Not John not John not John.  _ Alex had been doing so well, he couldn’t screw up now. 

Alex made purposeful eye contact with Jefferson as he loosened his hold on the girl now clinging to him. She asked if he wanted to ‘get out of here—’ a ridiculously cliche line if Alex ever heard one. He smiled and declined, moving away from their dance and not breaking his furious deadlock stare with Jefferson, who was now looking Alex up and down from across the club with that irritating Southern laziness of his. He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his lip quirking up at the strange outfit. Then, it happened. 

_ “Disco Tits,” _ he mouthed, the lip-sync all too familiar to Alex, who stiffened up, fear coursing through his blood at the nickname.  _ Not John not John not John.  _

Just Jefferson.

Alex smiled, a thought popping into his mind. Maybe this was a bad idea. Fuck, he knew it was a god-awful idea. But he did always have a penchant for throwing himself into horrible situations just to let himself destruct. And Jefferson was destructive all right. Destructively attractive, if the contours of his body outlined by his form-fitting clothes could be used as proof. He began to make his way over to Jefferson, coasting on the high of everything he had consumed and the fact that there was no way where this would end up turning out good. Well, that suited Alex fine. He didn’t want pity, he didn’t want gentleness. He wanted someone to shove him around and pin him down and make him  _ forget.  _ As he walked, Alexander muttered words under his breath, to his own fast-paced melody. 

_Motherfucking queen of the discotheque—people wanna know how I move so slick—motherfucking queen of the disco tits—_  
Jefferson looked even nicer up close, focusing solely on Alex advancing towards him and steadily ignoring the indignant confusion of Madison, who was trying to ignore the multi-colored crowds around them. 

“ _ Uh, uh.”  _ Alex imagined that instead of an excruciating memory or a random stranger, it could be  _ Jefferson  _ making those sounds. Maybe it was his intoxication, but Alex never thought he could find his asshole coworker who he hadn’t spoken to in months attractive.  _ But hey,  _ he wasn’t complaining. Jefferson smiled at him cautiously, eyes flickering around Alex’s body. Instead of recoiling in disgust like he might have if he were sober, Alex preened at the attention. 

“I’m high as fuck,” Alex said under his breath in a sing-song, grinning widely at Jefferson, who was standing in such a spot that he was perfectly illuminated by light beams. 

But John was always the beam of light in Alex’s life.

But John wasn’t here, hadn’t been for months. 

But Alexander was the motherfucking queen of the disco tits, and he intended to make the most of this night. 

 

No matter what it cost him.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is the first one-shot in a series of fourteen, each being based on one song from Tove Lo's album titled "Blue Lips." I strongly recommend listening to it if you want to understand what's going on.  
> I've been wanting to write some self-destructive Alexander and also push my writing boundaries to cover stuff like grief, dependency, communication in relationships, and unhealthy attitudes and actions, especially towards alcohol, drugs, and sex.  
> A huge thank you to my darling beta reader and summary writer <3: swanofthelake  
> I really hope you enjoyed , so please let me know what you think! I adore all comments so much <3  
> Also, if you want to see writing snippets and various shenanigans, along with more information on this series, go ahead and follow me on Instagram @lightningin.abottle  
> Thank you for reading!


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